Technological Field
The described technology generally relates to a method for communicating and sharing of information between a first control system onboard an aircraft and at least one second ground control system. The described technology also generally relates to an associated system for communicating and sharing of information.
The described technology is located in the field of aeronautics, and in particular, in the improvement of piloting conditions of an aircraft and for assisting decisions in a piloting system.
Description of the Related Technology
Conventionally, in civil aviation, an aircraft is piloted by a crew, and comprises onboard devices giving the possibility to the crew to communicate with control systems located on the ground, comprising air control systems and systems for communicating information from the airline company on the one hand. The communication capabilities conventionally used comprise vocal communication, allowing the crew, and in particular, the pilot to converse with, for example, an air controller on the one hand, and a capability for communication of digitized data on the other hand.
An aircraft in flight may be found in a nominal situation, in which the operation of all the onboard instruments is nominal and the weather conditions give the possibility of following a pre-established flight plan, or in a degraded situation, which may be a critical situation, in which the pre-established flight plan cannot be followed.
Several such degraded situations may, for example, occur in the case of material degradation of the onboard instrumentation and of degraded weather conditions. In such cases, it can be necessary to carry out a diversion with respect to the pre-established flight plan and to carry out landing at an airport different from the initially intended one. It is clear that in such a situation, the stress and the cognitive burden on the crew are very high. Further, it is primordial to carry out a quick and optimized making of a decision depending on the actual conditions of the encountered situation.
The knowledge of the entirety of the information which gives rise to the possibility of defining a situation is also called “situation awareness” (or being aware of the situation) in aeronautics.
In a degraded situation, it is necessary to collect relevant pieces of information updated from the control systems based on the ground, in order to improve awareness of the current situation and to make a relevant decision.
For example, when a degraded situation requires a diversion, the selection of an airport for an emergency landing can be made on the basis of a multitude of criteria, comprising the weather conditions extracted from weather observation reports (METAR), the condition and the availability of the airport infrastructures, the capacity for receiving passengers, the capacity for repairs, the messages for airmen called Notice to Airmen (NOTAMS) comprising pieces of information published by government agencies for air navigation control.
At the present time, in such degraded or critical situations, the members of the piloting crew are led to communicating with operators of the ground control systems via voice communications via a radio link, or to requesting information and data via aircraft communication addressing and reporting system (ACARS) data links, allowing the input of requests and transmission/reception of digitized data.
It is nevertheless clear that the piloting crew is then under conditions of intense stress, and that the onboard environment may be degraded because of failures or difficult weather conditions, therefore voice exchanges and input of data may prove to be difficult to achieve and time consuming.
Therefore, there exists a need for facilitating the communication of information between onboard the aircraft and the ground, in particular in degraded or critical situations.